Declaration statements

Introduction

​indicator()​

Every indicator¹ script must contain one call to the indicator function, which has the following signature:

indicator(title, shorttitle, overlay, format, precision, scale, max_bars_back, timeframe, timeframe_gaps, explicit_plot_zorder, max_lines_count, max_labels_count, max_boxes_count)

The indicator function determines the indicator’s general properties. The most important arguments of the indicator function are described below, a full overview of all [indicator()]` parameters can be found in its Reference Manual entry.

Only the title parameter is mandatory. It defines the name of the indicator. This name will be used in the Indicators dialog box and is independent of the name used to save the script in your Personal Library.

shorttitle is the short name of the indicator displayed on the chart, if it must be different than the value of title.

overlay is a “bool” parameter. If it is true then the study will be added as an overlay on top of the main chart. If it is false then it will be added in a separate pane. False is the default setting. Note that if you change the parameter’s value in a script that is already on a chart, you need to use the Add to Chart button to apply the change.

format defines the type of formatting used for study values appearing on the price axis, in indicator values or in the Data Window. Possible values are: format.inherit, format.price and format.volume. The default is format.inherit, which uses the format settings from the chart, unless precision = is also used, in which case it will override the effect of format.inherit. When format.price is used, the default precision will be “2”, unless one is specified using precision =. When format.volume is used, the format is equivalent to precision = 0 used in earlier versions of Pine Script^®, where “5183” becomes “5.183K”.

precision is the number of digits after the floating point used to format study values. It must be a non-negative integer and not greater than 16. If omitted, then formatting from the parent series on the chart will be used. If the format is format.inherit and the precision parameter is used with a value, then the study will not inherit formatting from the chart’s settings and the value specified will be used instead, as if format = format.price had been used.

​strategy()​

​library()​

Footnote